Journals
2026 EN
Rueda Galán Luis
Minarets, domes, minbars and other architectural structures throughout the Muslim world are often topped by a gilded metal pinnacle, known in the Middle Ages as ʿalam in some parts of the Middle East and Asia, and jāmūr in the Islamic West. Many medieval churches in the Iberian Peninsula have preserved these elements transformed into crosses, taken as spoils of war during the conquest of al-Andalus. This article explores what the jāmūr symbolised to the Muslims of al-Andalus and why it was so attractive to Christian conquerors as a trophy of war.
Journals
2026 EN
Matovski Aleksandar
This paper examines the drivers behind the Sino-Russian partnership—the most consequential alignment since the Cold War. Challenging existing accounts, the paper argues that Moscow and Beijing converged not because of external threats, or regime insecurity, but when these two dangers combined. Tracing the trajectory of the Sino-Russian rapprochement, the analysis shows that the weakening Putin regime sought China’s support to offset the high geopolitical cost of conflicts that it launched to preserve itself. Fearing that a collapse of Putinism could undermine the Chinese regime, Beijing, in turn, maintained a lifeline for Russia’s beleaguered dictatorship. The paper posits that the Sino-Russian convergence is therefore best understood as a three-level game, where the two dictatorships leverage their international actions (level 1) and mutual relations (level 3) to secure their power domestically (level 2). This framework offers crucial insights for containing Russian aggression and preventing escalating tensions between China and Western powers.
Journals
2026 EN
Flynn Christopher P.
The Strasbourg cavalry games of 842 were played after the more famous Strasbourg Oaths by the combined armies of King Charles the Bald (d.877) and King Louis the German (d.876). This episode shows the multipurpose value of one instance of early medieval sporting and military exercise. It has long been recognized that these games provided a chance to train and practice legitimate martial skills, but the overall value of the games was much more in addition to that. They were also a chance for kings and commanders to boost sagging morale among the soldiers, which was desperately needed in the wake of the bloody battle of Fontenoy in 841. Additionally, they were an expression of traditional Frankish cultural values, as a display of martial prowess and horsemanship, for which the Franks were particularly known and upon which they prided themselves. This provided a firm example of the ties that bound the increasingly divided empire within the present army, whose troops were drawn from all over Carolingian Europe. The games constituted a key morale component to ensure that the armies remained loyal and in the field to finish out the remainder of the Carolingian civil war, which ended formally with the Treaty of Verdun in 843.
Journals
2026 EN
Stefanik Ryszard
Following World War II, the Communists took control of physical education universities, subjecting the academic community – particularly the youth – to indoctrination between 1950 and 1956.They created a selection system to facilitate access to studies for working-class and rural individuals. This system was intended to ensure the recruitment of individuals sympathetic to the communists, i.e. those who owed their social and professional advancement to the party elite. The Communists adapted the curriculum to the new political realities and established new youth organizations, consistently implementing the guidelines of the Party elite. Mandatory participation in ideological training, propaganda campaigns, community service, cultural and educational festivals, and state ceremonies was one element of this policy. Even sporting events were subordinated to political and ideological goals. The authorities demanded not only participation from the academic community in the celebrated events, but also visible enthusiasm. The primary party organization at each university oversaw this process. Academic circles submitted to the authorities, ostensibly accepting the communist system. However, there were teachers and students who supported the ruling party and engaged in propaganda activities.
Journals
2026 EN
Mahla Daniel
Between the 1950s and 1990s, Israeli football existed in sustained institutional limbo—expelled from the Asian Football Confederation yet repeatedly denied Union of European Football Associations entry. International sports federations sustained this prolonged uncertainty through procedural delay and improvised compromise rather than principled resolution. Managed liminality, a condition of institutional in-betweenness produced by strategic deferral of politically contentious decisions, shaped Israeli debates over national belonging and regional orientation. Cold War-era sports governance prioritized organizational cohesion over definitive action, transforming political conflict into administrative drift. Israel’s two-decade search for continental affiliation reveals how postwar institutions negotiated the boundaries of international inclusion through sustained ambiguity rather than fixed geography or formal rules.
Journals
2026 EN
Pawilen Ryan Alvin
While Imperial Japan’s cultural imperialism through sports in its other colonies has received considerable scholarly attention, there remains a notable gap in research on said topic during Imperial Japan’s occupation of the Philippines from 1942 to 1945. Judo and kendo served as instruments of Japanese imperialism. Digitized surviving copies of the Tribune demonstrate how these martial arts were portrayed as tools for physical, moral, and spiritual development. Public demonstrations of judo and kendo were staged alongside cultural events and rituals that promoted Japanese governance and identity. Initially taught to the Manila Metropolitan Constabulary to maintain peace and order, judo instruction later extended to selected Filipino students and prisoners of war. Although minimal in scope and impact compared to Japan’s other colonies due to Japan’s brief occupation, wartime conditions, and source constraints, the strategic use of martial arts remains a significant aspect of Japan’s cultural imperialism campaign in the Philippines.
Journals
2026 EN
Vechsuruck Tanadej Pete
South Korea’s economic trajectory has been one of the most successful stories of post-war catch-up industrialization. The Korean developmental state has used various tools, including the exchange rate, to become an export powerhouse in the twenty-first century. However, the export-led growth strategy has had a distributive conflict with Korea’s working class. Based on post-Keynesian and structuralist economics, this paper assesses the political economy of exchange rate depreciation and export-led industrialization in South Korea. I show that exports as a share of GDP have constantly risen to become the most important growth engine in the Korean economy. This long-term trend, however, has coincided with a decline in the labor income share in South Korea. I formulate the structuralist macroeconomic model to explain dynamics of real wages, real exchange rates, exports, and output. I finally use a vector autoregression (VAR) analysis to show that exchange rate depreciations during modern South Korea (1989Q1–2023Q1) are inflationary and contractionary in the short run. Currency depreciations have ambiguous effects on exports, but they clearly reduce output gaps. On the other hand, an increase in nominal wages is expansionary or varies positively with output gaps.
Journals
2026 EN
Mantilla Luis Felipe
Under what conditions do insurgents target religious communities, faith leaders, places of worship in conflicts that are not primarily about religion? Building on insights from scholarship on violence against non-combatants in civil wars, war and religion, and religion–state relations, this article proposes that insurgents who are not primarily motivated by religion are most likely to engage in violence against religion when they are engaged in contested efforts to control territory and encounter resistance from faith leaders. It then probes the plausibility of the argument through a mixed-method case study of the Shining Path insurgency in Peru, showing that variations in the spatial and temporal distribution of Shining Path’s attacks on religion are consistent with theoretical expectations.
Journals
2026 EN
Charoenvattananukul Peera
How do state leaders utilise a national ritual to remedy their sense of ontological insecurity, especially when there is a sudden need to recalibrate foreign policy? Despite the growing prominence of the ontological security approach in International Relations (IR), there is a notable lack of discussion on the relationship between ontological security, ritual, and narrative, particularly in empirical studies. Building on the ‘ritual-approach literature’ in IR, this paper argues that national celebration, ceremony, and festival are the performative rituals that mirror the state’s ontological security and insecurity. This paper substantiates the argument by examining the case of Thailand’s United Nations Celebration Day at the dawn of the Cold War. During the Second World War, Thailand allied with the Axis powers before narrowly escaping harsh punishments after the end of the war to cement strong ties with the US and the victor powers. To demonstrate that the Thai nation became one with the United Nations’ peaceful cause, the Thai government organised the United Nations Celebration Day to inform the world of its pacifistic intent and to reconstruct the new foreign policy narrative.
Journals
2026 EN
Reeves Audrey · Gignoux Hannah
Women’s rights activists have described museums and other heritage sites as tools of advocacy to fight the scourge of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). Museums can sensitize the public to sexual crimes related to war and genocide and, it is hoped, help pursue justice for survivors and prevent further violence. For war museums, the curation of CRSV nonetheless poses ethical and political challenges. This study asks, how do leading war museums in the United States and United Kingdom curate the memory of CRSV, including that perpetrated by liberal democracies? It examines war exhibits at the Imperial War Museum (London) and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (Washington, D.C.) and considers strategies, dilemmas, and openings in their attempts at evoking CRSV. IWM privileges verbal narrative and centres CRSV perpetrated by authoritarian states. NMAH presents photos featuring sexual violence perpetrated by military personnel of the United States, a liberal democracy, while also obscuring this violence by not verbally recognizing it. The article argues that each exhibit addresses some feminist concerns while obfuscating others. It concludes by advocating curatorial strategies that invite a visceral empathetic connection with victims/survivors – testimonies, art, and immersive experiences – while balancing conflicting feminist ethical imperatives.